Governors, educators push uniform teaching standards

Mar. 11, 2010 12:00 AMStaff and wire reports

Governors and education leaders on Wednesday proposed sweeping new school standards that could lead to students across the country using the same math and English textbooks and taking the same tests, replacing a patchwork of state and local systems in an attempt to raise student achievement nationwide.

But states must first adopt the rigorous new Common Core State Standards, and implementing the standards on such a large scale won't be easy.

Two states, Texas and Alaska, have already refused to join the project, and everyone from state legislatures to the nation's 10,000 local school boards and 3 million teachers could chime in with their opinions.

Since No Child Left Behind became law in 2002, every state has been required to create a set of K-12 grade-level learning goals in math and English. Most often, state standards were developed by committees of teachers, and the quality varied from state to state.

In 2005, Arizona was one of the first states to join an effort to create nationally uniform English and math standards promoted by Achieve Inc., a mostly corporate-led non-profit organization designed to increase the rigor of what was taught in K-12 schools. The Achieve standards were matched to international academic benchmarks.

At the time, education leaders thought it politically impossible for Congress to pass uniform national K-12 standards.

But now, as more than 30 states have followed Achieve's lead, a groundswell of support has emerged for common math and English standards.

The National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers joined Achieve's efforts and created a draft of Common Core State Standards, which they proposed Wednesday.

The Common Core standards are still based on international benchmarks and similar to those promoted by Achieve, said Tom Horne, Arizona's superintendent of public instruction.

"The disadvantage of national standards is that the teachers in the state don't have the same buy-in," Horne said. "The advantage is that they're internationally benchmarked standards so that students who have mastered these standards can compete internationally."

After the standards are complete, each state still will have to decide whether to adopt them as a replacement for their existing education goals.

The Obama administration is pushing the movement by requiring states to adopt the Common Core standards to be eligible for large federal education grants.

Arizona adopted Achieve's math standards, required them to be taught in classrooms for the first time this year and tweaked the AIMS high-school math exam to reflect the tougher standards. The drafted Common Core math standards are closely matched to what Arizona already adopted, state officials said.

Arizona education officials will wait until the Common Core English standards are final, most likely in May or June, before asking the Arizona State Board of Education to adopt them. States must adopt them by August to be eligible for some federal grants.

Arizona is expected to adopt the standards.

The public is invited to comment on the proposed new standards until April 2, and the developers hope to publish final education goals for K-12 math and English in May.

President Barack Obama told the nation's governors last month that he wants to make money from Title I, the federal government's biggest school-aid program, contingent on adoption of college- and career-ready reading and math standards.

Already, the federal government has opened bidding for $350 million to work on new national tests that would be given to students in states that adopted the national standards.

But some critics worry the federal government, which is enthusiastically watching the project but not directing it, will force them to adopt the results.

"Texas has chosen to preserve its sovereign authority to determine what is appropriate for Texas children to learn in its public schools," Robert Scott, Texas' commissioner of education, wrote in a letter to U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. "It is clear that the first step toward nationalization of our schools has been put into place."

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is helping pay for the effort, believes most states will value the new national standards.

Vicki L. Phillips, director of the foundation's K-12 education program, said every state she has talked to thinks that high-school achievement isn't high enough and that more students need to graduate ready for college.

"The standards make those aspirations concrete and tangible," she said.

One state, Kentucky, already adopted the standards in February, before the process was complete.

A look at the math standards reveals the changes are not dramatic. Kids would still learn to count in kindergarten, not multiply and divide.

But each grade will have fewer goals in each subject area, and the goals are written plainly with little or no educational jargon.

Also, some learning goals may start to show up earlier than expected.

For example, second-graders will be expected to add and subtract triple-digit numbers. Fractions will start in third grade. Kindergartners will be expected to learn to count to 100.

One math expert who was not involved in writing the draft standards questioned the value of moving lessons earlier.

Cathy Seeley, senior fellow at the Charles A. Dana Center at the University of Texas, has been involved in the revision of math standards in more than a dozen states.

She sees a lot of similarity between the recent state revisions and the national plan.